


Embrace the Chaos

by Bonymaloney



Series: Weird B-Movie Stuff Happens To Max [2]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Board Ending, Canon-Typical Drug Use, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Just down a bunch of cranberry juice it’ll be worth it, Marauder King Max, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 17:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30109434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonymaloney/pseuds/Bonymaloney
Summary: After quelling a riot in Tartarus, Pearl is Sophia Akande’s most effective fixer. Feeling morally compromised but trapped with no way out, she is sent to Emerald Vale to investigate rumours of a new type of marauder.
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Series: Weird B-Movie Stuff Happens To Max [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2215848
Comments: 9
Kudos: 9





	Embrace the Chaos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IrreWilderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/gifts).



_Max had no interest in serving any organization--let alone the OSI, which he knew would never tolerate his "heretical" theories. Instead, he attempted to minister to the people of Byzantium. They rejected his ideas, being far too satisfied with their own material comforts. Disillusioned, Max gave up and left the city. He was never heard from again._

Pearl cried for Max, and when she was finally forced to accept that neither smarts nor persistence had enabled her to track him down, she mourned for him. She had no body to bury, but she dug a hole under the purple peach tree in her domicile garden, and placed inside his favourite books and his tossball stick and the framed likeness of the two of them that haunted her cabin. She drank Iceberg Aged as she dug. 

She had come to believe that living on your knees might actually be braver than dying on your feet. It was definitely harder. What was ironical was that there were a lot of things about life in Byzantium that she would have loved and indulged in to the hilt, if she’d felt like she’d earned them rather than been given them for who she was. So Pearl spent her days keeping Phineas encouraged and Rockwell on track, surrounded by people who thought that the idea that everyone in Halcyon deserved the same chance at a good life was a joke at best, an affront at worst. They said work fortified the spirit, but it felt more like it was grinding her away. She idly activated and deactivated her paper knife, stared at it and thought of nothing. 

Sophia Akande sent for her. Pearl had a horrifying suspicion that if she left it long enough she might fall in love with Akande. Surrounded by dilettantes and short sighted greed, it was refreshing to be around someone who truly believed that what she was doing was for the good of all Halcyon, even if what she was doing was horrifying. Pearl had already cracked the casing of one repressed religious fanatic; maybe she could go two for two. She laughed and then caught herself sobbing. She washed her hands and face in cold water, then re braided her hair and answered the summons. 

It was a relief to be sent from Byzantium. The Unreliable touched down at the edge of Emerald Vale, on an old disused landing pad left over from a time when the Vale had been so bustling and thriving that the main port simply couldn’t handle all the traffic. But those days were long gone, and now it seemed that Emerald Vale was the epitome of all the problems that beset the colony. As a case in point, Akande had sent her here to investigate rumours of a new kind of marauder - vicious and brutal as ever, but seeming focussed, even strategic. They had even been seen displaying a kind of ritual behaviour, although whether that was just exaggerations by terrified town guards wasn’t clear. 

She wandered down the ramp and stretched her legs. The sky was so full, ships and moons and the planetary ring just catching the last of the sunlight. There was the sound of running water and the smell of mockapple. She remembered how uplifted she’d been, the first time she saw it. 

Pearl went back to the ship and dressed in her armour. She had ADA partly retract the front starboard landing gear, raise the ailerons, and randomly fire and deactivate the main thruster. The running lights flashed a distress call. The Unreliable looked like a big wounded animal; easy prey, come and get it. She stepped back into the shadows and waited. 

The thing about marauders was that they were predictable. They didn’t care if they lived or died, so they ran at you with their blades screaming bloodlust, took the easiest firing positions regardless of cover. But Pearl had the best armour the UDL could manufacture, and the sharpest sword; and she also didn’t care if she lived or died. 

She moved in purple time, slicing and stabbing. SAM trundled down the ramp behind her shouting a battle cry, guarding her back. A marauder in power armour went down in a shower of corrosive cleaning. Pearl kicked a woman, then buried her sword between her shoulder blades as she staggered. Her vision began to fade back to reality. 

A flanking manoeuvre was not predictable. More marauders, bursting out from behind one of the abandoned autoloaders. Pearl caught her breath and turned, saw SAM raise its cannon, then saw it hesitate - why the fuck would SAM hesitate? - and then a blow to her head cracked her visor and sent a dull nauseating throb down her spine, and she knew no more. 

When she woke her armour was gone, and she was lying on her side on a steel cargo crate. Her ankles were bound, her hands tied behind her back. Since when did marauders take prisoners? Outlaws, sure, they thrived on intel and ransoms, but marauders’ brains were too scrambled for that. 

It was dark, and she realised she was in one of the many volcanic caves found throughout the Vale. There was what sounded like a stream close by, and the walls were lit with reddish flickering firelight. A canid lay on the floor a little distance away, and she eyed it nervously, but it appeared to be sleeping. She could hear a muffled chanting coming from deeper into the cave. 

She took a deep breath and tensed her body, and wrenched herself into an upright position. From where she sat she could see marauders a short distance away, kneeling in a circle. Unlike most in Byzantium, who thought they were animals at best, Pearl knew marauders were messed up people. She’d seen them maintaining their weapons, building habitations; even cooking. But stuff like this seemed to go beyond simply meeting their immediate needs. 

A man was standing in the centre of the circle, holding some sort of basin or vessel in front of him. He went from marauder to marauder, handing each one of them a small object from his bowl. “ _Embrace the chaos_ ,” they would rasp in response, their voices distorted by the masks and helmets they wore or simply through years of screaming and neglect. 

Something about the man was oddly familiar, although it was difficult to make out what. He wore a heavy chest plate over some kind of tattered robe, and strangely shaped headgear. As he moved so that he was illuminated by the fire Pearl could see more clearly - the things in the bowl were syringes of adrenatime. Despite his bizarre appearance, his stance and his smile made her ache. 

“Hello, Captain,” he said, and Pearl didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

Max dismissed his congregation and sat opposite her with his legs crossed, on what could only be described as a throne. It was welded together from steel plates and boxes, with pieces of gold mosaic and what looked like stained glass embedded in its construction. She could see that despite his ludicrous outfit he was clean shaven, and had even managed to maintain his undercut, although the unevenness and the scarring suggested that he might be using a knife. He wore a bowler hat on his head, with shards of metal forced through the brim to form a kind of crown, and a chain around his neck made of scientific instruments and pieces of jewellery and corporate long service awards, all twisted up together. A telescoping staff painted in red and black rested across his lap. He looked barbaric and ridiculous and frightening all at once. 

“You know, if you’d stayed, the OSI would’ve made you a bishop,” Pearl said. 

His face contorted in sudden rage, as though she’d unexpectedly asked him to read French. 

“Fuck the OSI! I wasted half my life trying to be who they told me I should be, and it was all in service of a lie.”

At the sound of his raised voice, the canid lifted its head with an enquiring whine. Max laughed and scratched it beneath its crest. 

“Down, boy. This is Darwin. He thinks I might feed you to him; we haven’t sacrificed anyone for a while, I suppose… No,” he continued, calm again. “The church are mere lackeys of the Board, and the Board are too afraid to face the truth. They’d rather let the human race die than accept that they don’t deserve what they have. You agreed with me on that, once.”

That was true, and she felt her face burn in shame. 

“It’s not like that! They’re working with Phineas now! We’re going to change things, just… slower.” It was what she told herself every night. Sometimes she believed it. 

“Ah, Dr Welles. Now he wasn’t afraid to make sacrifices. Thirteen of them, I believe, and in thanks the Universe sent him you. But he’s lost his way, he’s too afraid of who he truly is. Like someone else I might mention. No, I believe marauders represent humanity’s purest, most advanced state. They see something they want and they take it. No false system of control to justify why some get to take while others go without. No platitudes about the sanctity of human life.”

She hadn't seen him for months, and yet he was inside her head. 

“Max, you’re living in a garbage dump! With a bunch of marauders who would kill you in a second if you weren’t giving them adrenatime. You’re not some philosopher king - you’re Zoe Chandler!”

He cocked his head to the side, curious, and she remembered that Zoe Chandler had been before he’d joined her crew. It was jarring - she felt as though she’d known him forever.

“I didn’t give them adrenatime, Captain. You know who did that. We found out together.” He got to his feet and began pacing. “My people take adrenatime, but yours make adrenatime. My conscience is perfectly clear in comparison.”

He rolled up his sleeve and took one of the syringes. 

“Max - no!”

“Do you know when the first time I ever had adrenatime was? In prison, when they flogged me, they would inject me first to ensure that I remained conscious throughout the whole miserable experience. When I left Byzantium, I was full of a pain that was infinitely worse. I wanted it to end. To be mindless, like a marauder.”

He slid the needle into his arm, depressed the plunger with a sign. Pearl flinched and braced herself for what was to come; seeing her tense, Max laughed. 

“Don’t worry, Captain. I’m not going to suddenly roll my eyes and turn on you like something out of one of Mr Millstone’s serials. How is he doing, by the way?”

The casual cruelty of that took her breath away. 

“I believe the hermit’s compound has protected me. I feel all of the stamina and the focus and the clarity..! The chaos is beautiful, Captain. You’re beautiful.”

He leaned in and kissed her, and Pearl felt her heart tear in two. He smelled strongly of himself - he stank, frankly - but she had cried every night until SAM had finally managed to wash the scent of him out of her bedding, and now he was kissing her. 

“I’ve been waiting for a ship, and now I have one. I aim to use the Unreliable to bring my flock to Scylla, to discover the hermit’s secret and to inoculate them the way I have been. With such singularity of purpose and clarity of vision as the two drugs produce in combination, the colony will be ours. We’ll take Gorgon, and we’ll be able to make enough adrenatime for everyone to embrace the chaos. That was one thing the OSI did get right - humanity will be as gods.”

Pearl sneered at him. 

“I think I liked it better when you used to talk like this about the Scientism. At least you weren’t dressed like a damn tossball mascot.” 

He drew a knife with a serrated blade. Pearl grit her teeth and closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to beg.

Max laughed at her wide-eyed surprise as he cut her bonds, her grimace of pain as the circulation returned to her hands and feet. 

“I’m not going to kill you in cold blood, Captain. What kind of sacrifice to chaos would that be? I’m going to fight you. We used to be good at that, remember?”

Pearl drank in the sight of him before her. His desperate, ridiculous parody of the authority the OSI had denied him. How handsome he was, despite or maybe even because of his marauder finery. He leaned in again, his lips brushing at her ear. “We were good at a lot of things…”

She palmed the paper knife and activated it as she drove it forward, up under his armour, through the tattered fabric of his cassock and into his heart. The plasma cauterised as it went, and there was hardly any blood, just a sudden choking gasp. She kissed him and held him, made herself look him in the eyes the whole time, and she thought she saw gratitude there but it might just have been what she wanted to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the otp kiss prompt no.50, “ kisses with their last dying breath”. thanks for the prompt Irre Wilderer, bet you’re regretting it now, I sure am 🤷🏻♀️


End file.
